"Gordon Arnaut" wrote in message
...
Evan,

Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if the $50,000 sportplane
is feasible.

If I was to offer $10,000 to someone on this list to assemble a Zenith
601, would I have any takers? I think yes. There are probably guys here
who have built one of these -- or similar -- before and have all the tools
and know what's involved.

The kit from Zenith costs about 15k, let's say the Rotax is another 15k,
the 10k mentioned for assembly, and add another 10k for various bits and
pieces. That is $50,000 total.

No there would not be a profit for me, but Zenith, Rotax and everyone else
is still making a profit, including any and all middlemen.

Now if I had my own design and could stamp out the metal myself, instead
of having to buy a kit from someone else, would I be able to make a
profit? Yes. I would make at least as much profit as Zenith makes on the
sale of one of their kits.

So there you have it, the $50,000 sportplane -- without any structural
changes to the industry.

The more I think about, the more this is a no-brainer. I think the people
who doubt the viability of the $50,000 sportplane are simply conditioned
by the marketing propaganda spread by the various commercial interestes
and their mouthpieces, the magazines.


Regards,

Gordon.

I think you have one huge failure in you calculation. The labor cost.
$10,000 is way to low. If you take an employee or employees and only pay
them ONLY $10.00 per hour when you load all the costs of taxes, insurance
and other associated B.S. you are looking at $22.50/hour. That only gives
you 444.44 man hours to build the plane. Even Zenith quotes higher than that
for the airframe only.